Demand for network-based distribution of protected and unprotected data is increasing dramatically. Yet, many challenges exist that need to be addressed to effectively distribute data via electronic commerce such as: (1) conducting reliable, secure transactions necessary to build confidence with both information providers (e.g., data publishers) and data customers; (2) ensuring that data can be located, accessed and purchased in a timely manner, and (3) ensuring that information providers or publishers can specify access controls and that the administration of the posting of datasets which are capable of changing dynamically is not unwieldy and unmanageable.
A need exists for a data distribution infrastructure which addresses the aforementioned challenges and which overcomes a number of disadvantages associated with existing distributed data commerce systems. Traditional distributed data commerce systems are implemented behind a firewall so that secure transactions can be made. These systems, however, are characterized by high installation and maintenance costs for both software and hardware. Another disadvantage associated with many existing distributed data commerce systems is the requirement of a customer to load special fulfillment software onto the customer computer prior to the acquisition of any secure data. The fulfillment software enables the customer to order, purchase and decrypt secure data. Another disadvantage of many existing distributed data commerce systems arises from the static encryption of datasets. Information providers typically encrypt datasets to be distributed as secure datasets and store the secured datasets on a web server prior to any demand for the datasets by customers. Thus, modification of the datasets and overall administration of the posting of the datasets is less efficient since the data is already encrypted.